Thursday, December 26, 2013

Death Metal Underground

Christmas Newsletter 12/16-12/25

Because Metal Is Art

The problem with dreams is that
when they are achieved, the dream is no more. Life is about the chase,
not the catch. This doubly applies to metal once it got social
acceptance.

During the 1980s and 1990s in everywhere but Scandinavia, to be metal
was to identify yourself as a kind of social reject. It was equal parts
nerdly and menacingly rootless at a time when stable suburban living and
office jobs were the only acceptable future.

Sometime in the late 1990s however metal was discovered as a form of
natural resource. This resource is not renewable and hard to locate. It
is hipness: a combination of authenticity, rebellion, transgression and
the kind of personality that makes a character in a novel appealing.

The Glorious Times team recorded
the “A Day of Death” concert from 1990 and made it available as a free
download in MP3 or FLAC format. Basically an abridged version of the
show, A Day of Death 1990 shows founders of the underground at their
best.

In conversation with Martin
Jacobsen, the topic of “heaviness” came up. What is heavy? Why is the
term applied to metal? This question in many ways defines why it’s so
hard to understand what metal is, much less describe it.

From my experience, metal is a spirit that leads to an approach. It’s
not dissimilar to classical, where a certain attitude toward life,
spirituality and culture leads to a form of music complete with its
complexity and techniques. Nor is it all that different from martial
arts, where a specific outlook leads to some near-universal shared
characteristics.

Derogatory returns to the oldest
form of death metal which is the fast and muscular rushing
tremolo-picked phrasal riffs that Slayer, Morbid Angel, Massacra,
Mortuary and Sepultura made famous. Much like those earlier acts,
Derogatory creates a rhythmically compelling work in Above All Else that
adds depth through the contrast in riff phrase and the sensations those
evoke.

Very few people have any idea
what grindcore means at this point because of the high degree of
crossover between grindcore and death metal. Not just one way, but both:
grind bands becoming deathy in the Napalm Death style, and death metal
bands becoming grindy as happened from Suffocation onward.

But what was grindcore? History might show us that punk and metal were
birthed in the early 1970s and spend the next three decades crossing
over. This resembles a quarter-century negotiation as to what aspects of
each to keep in the hybrid with the other. Early hybrids included speed
metal, which used uptempo punk rhythms, and thrash, which combined
metal riffs with punk songs. Grindcore was a logical extension of
thrash.

Coming from the
Arghoslent/Sacriphyx school of rock-based melodic death metal,
Minneapolis’ House of Atreus offers a metal experience for those who
might prefer a bit less total extremity in the music.

Receiving media coverage from No Clean Singing and Zero Tolerance
magazine, among others, the band has raised itself in the public eye.
Not bad for a bunch of guys who named their band after a Virgin Steele
album.

Curious about this oddball band, writer Kevin Ord went in greater depth
to get the story about House of Atreus, its rock/metal hybrid style, and
the path it is taking to get recognized in the underground.

What are Sadistic Metal Reviews?
We think heavy metal has artistic value. Advertisers want heavy metal to
be the token rebellion of future generations of consumers. We have
truth and cruelty on our side, but they’ve got the money. Read between
the screams for the rare non-failures…

In the 1980s, the term “poseur”
or “poser” was used to near-death by people trying to describe those who
were involved with the music simply to make themselves look cool.

In the 1990s, we had “scenesters” who were people who hung around a
musical scene to use it as a justification for their lifestyle. If
someone questioned their lack of success or purpose in life, they
pointed to the “scene” that they were part of.

And now, as the hands of time have run down further, we have hipsters:
people who use music as a form of lifestyle adornment to explain why
their life is better than yours. Generally they do this from a position
of outsiderness, and by proving to be more obscure in their tastes than
you, make you look like a herd-sheep in contrast.

Lonegoat played a fifty-minute
uninterrupted set that combined themes from the first two Goatcraft
albums with a heavy degree of intense showmanship and sonic manipulation
that is closer to what a noise band like Zeni Geva or an
electro-acoustic act would do. The hammering technique utilizes the
sonic properties of not just the keyboard but the hall itself because so
many notes in rapid succession create an echo effect that produces a
wave of sound sweeping over the listener. Sitting and sometimes
standing, the demoniacal musician played the crowd by sweeping from high
notes to low, from quiet to loud, and from the elegant melodies that
comprise the inner core of his works to the pounding near-chaos that
obliterates all other thoughts from its listeners minds.

To love grindcore is to love the
genre “as you find it.” That is, it doesn’t make sense to go around
wishing why there isn’t more progressive symphonic grindcore with world
music influences. Grindcore is grindcore.

There’s plenty of room within that genre however. The only rules are
brutal punk/metal fusion chromatic riffing and a certain spirit that
keeps intensity high and doesn’t deviate into either holiday carols or
life-affirming waiting room jazz.

I used to loathe end-of-year
lists. They struck me as a pointless chance to advertise what should
have been obvious before. Over the years they have risen in my
estimation as a way not only to mark the year, but to bring up the gold
that gets lost in the chaos of everyday life. And yes, they’re also
shopping lists for the metalhead in your life.

This year our list is surprising even to hardened cynics. At a time when
metal is bragging up and down the Williamsburg alleys about how
“innovative” and “ground-breaking” it is, that novelty turns out to be
the remnants of the 1980s: emo, pop punk, shoegaze and indie. The real
innovation is as always underground, because to get out of the hive mind
one must first remove oneself from participation in normalcy.

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